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The Museum’s Collections document the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more. Search below to view digital records and find material that you can access at our library and at the Shapell Center.

Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former Soviet Union. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Kraków and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw within days of Germany's invasion of Poland in Sept. 1939 and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of World War II. He recorded this experience in both the book, "Siege" (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940), and the short film, "Siege" (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940), nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe.

Restrictions on use. Copyright belongs to Sam Bryan. Information about reproduction can be obtained by contacting the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive.

Record last modified: 2018-01-11 14:27:16
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn38858

Also in Julien Bryan collection

Collection consists of motion picture, still photographic materials, and colored glass slides and papers of Julien Bryan's visits to Poland, Nazi Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia during World War II. Also included in the collection are Julien Bryan's United States passport, scrapbook of newspaper clippings, announcements, and reviews of Julien Bryan's""Nazi Germany"" traveling lecture, an envelope of duplicate newspaper clippings on""Siege"" (of Warsaw), and a scrapbook of articles written on Julien Bryan's Siege of Warsaw film and book.

A ten-year-old Polish girl named Kazimiera Mika, mourns the death of her older sister, who was killed in a field in Warsaw during a German air raid. In the words of photographer Julien Bryan, "As we drove by a small field at the edge of town we were just a few minutes too late to witness a tragic event, the most incredible of all. Seven women had been digging potatoes in a field. There was no flour in their district, and they were desperate for food. Suddenly two German planes appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women returned to their work. They had to have food. But the Nazi fliers were not satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped somehow. While I was photographing the bodies, a little ten-year old girl came running up and stood transfixed by one of the dead. The woman was her older sister. The child had never before seen death and couldn't understand why her sister would not speak to her... The child looked at us in bewilderment. I threw my arm about her and held her tightly, trying to comfort her. She cried. So did I and the two Polish officers who were with me..." [Source: Bryan, Julien. "Warsaw: 1939 Siege; 1959 Warsaw Revisited." Warsaw, Polonia, 1959, pp.20-21.]

A group of Polish women pray on their knees before a large crucifix hanging outside an old wooden church that had been bombed by German aircraft a day earlier. In the words of photographer Julien Bryan, "The entire right wing of the building had been blown away, and where this section had been was an enormous crater, thirty feet across and fifteen feet deep. The rest of the building was still standing. A young Catholic priest with a serene face showed us about. Luckily, he said, they had heard the alarm for an air attack and he managed to get all his parishioners out of the church before the bomb struck." [Source: Bryan, Julien. "Warsaw 1939 Siege, 1959 Warsaw Revisited." Warsaw, Polonia, 1959, p. 22]

A group of Polish women pray on their knees before a large crucifix hanging outside an old wooden church that had been bombed by German aircraft a day earlier. In the words of photographer Julien Bryan, "The entire right wing of the building had been blown away, and where this section had been was an enormous crater, thirty feet across and fifteen feet deep. The rest of the building was still standing. A young Catholic priest with a serene face showed us about. Luckily, he said, they had heard the alarm for an air attack and he managed to get all his parishioners out of the church before the bomb struck." [Source: Bryan, Julien. "Warsaw 1939 Siege, 1959 Warsaw Revisited." Warsaw, Polonia, 1959, p. 22]

A ten-year-old Polish girl named Kazimiera Mika mourns the death of her older sister, who was killed in a field in Warsaw during a German air raid. Photographer Julien Bryan described the scene: "As we drove by a small field at the edge of town we were just a few minutes too late to witness a tragic event, the most incredible of all. Seven women had been digging potatoes in a field. There was no flour in their district, and they were desperate for food. Suddenly two German planes appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women returned to their work. They had to have food. But the Nazi fliers were not satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped somehow. While I was photographing the bodies, a little ten-year old girl came running up and stood transfixed by one of the dead. The woman was her older sister. The child had never before seen death and couldn't understand why her sister would not speak to her... The child looked at us in bewilderment. I threw my arm about her and held her tightly, trying to comfort her. She cried. So did I and the two Polish officers who were with me..." [Source: Bryan, Julien. "Warsaw: 1939 Siege; 1959 Warsaw Revisited." Warsaw, Polonia, 1959, pp.20-21.]

View from above of a Polish family performing their daily chores amidst the remnants of their household furnishings that they have reassembled outside the charred ruins of their home in Warsaw. The boy with the hatchet is Albert Turowski, who later became a film actor in postwar Poland.

A young boy, Zygmunt Askienow, sits with his rescued pet canary among the ruins of his home in Warsaw after a German air raid. In the words of photographer Julien Bryan, "Not far from the center of town a bomb had hit an apartment house and exposed the first, second, and third floors. A boy was walking dazedly back and forth carrying the one possession he had found -- a canary in its cage. He walked up and down over a pile of stones and bricks. Under the pile there were nine or ten bodies, so the neighbors told us, not yet recovered." [Source: Bryan, Julien. "Warsaw 1939 Siege, 1959 Warsaw Revisited." Warsaw, Polonia, 1959, p. 24]

View of a boarded up store in besieged Warsaw. The sign outside reads: "A black marketeer was here - He went to Bereza-Kartuska." Bereza - Kartuska was a Polish prison for political criminals that operated from 1934-1939.

Photographer Julien Bryan comforts a ten-year-old Polish girl named Kazimiera Mika, whose older sister was killed in a field in Warsaw during a German air raid. In the words of photographer Julien Bryan, "As we drove by a small field at the edge of town we were just a few minutes too late to witness a tragic event, the most incredible of all. Seven women had been digging potatoes in a field. There was no flour in their district, and they were desperate for food. Suddenly two German planes appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women returned to their work. They had to have food. But the Nazi fliers were not satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped somehow. While I was photographing the bodies, a little ten-year old girl came running up and stood transfixed by one of the dead. The woman was her older sister. The child had never before seen death and couldn't understand why her sister would not speak to her... The child looked at us in bewilderment. I threw my arm about her and held her tightly, trying to comfort her. She cried. So did I and the two Polish officers who were with me..." [Source: Bryan, Julien. "Warsaw: 1939 Siege; 1959 Warsaw Revisited." Warsaw, Polonia, 1959, pp.20-21.]

Polish citizens look at The Evening Express. It says: "The United States enters the block against Germany. Today England and France began the war with all their forces on land - sea - and air. America will not remain neutral."

An elderly Polish woman poses with two silver spoons and a pair of scissors, all that remained of her home after it was destroyed in a German air raid during the siege of Warsaw. The woman's name is Mrs. Jaworska. Julien Bryan later learned that she died in 1940.

A ten-year-old Polish girl named Kazimiera Mika, mourns the death of her older sister, who was killed in a field in Warsaw during a German air raid. In the words of photographer Julien Bryan, "As we drove by a small field at the edge of town we were just a few minutes too late to witness a tragic event, the most incredible of all. Seven women had been digging potatoes in a field. There was no flour in their district, and they were desperate for food. Suddenly two German planes appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women returned to their work. They had to have food. But the Nazi fliers were not satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped somehow. While I was photographing the bodies, a little ten-year old girl came running up and stood transfixed by one of the dead. The woman was her older sister. The child had never before seen death and couldn't understand why her sister would not speak to her... The child looked at us in bewilderment. I threw my arm about her and held her tightly, trying to comfort her. She cried. So did I and the two Polish officers who were with me..." [Source: Bryan, Julien. "Warsaw: 1939 Siege; 1959 Warsaw Revisited." Warsaw, Polonia, 1959, pp.20-21.]

Four Polish women view with anguish the bodies of those killed in a field in Warsaw, where they were digging for potatoes during the siege of the capital. In the words of photographer Julien Bryan, "As we drove by a small field at the edge of town we were just a few minutes too late to witness a tragic event, the most incredible of all. Seven women had been digging potatoes in a field. There was no flour in their district, and they were desperate for food. Suddenly two German planes appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women returned to their work. They had to have food. But the Nazi fliers were not satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped somehow." [Source: Bryan, Julien. "Warsaw: 1939 Siege; 1959 Warsaw Revisited." Warsaw, Polonia, 1959, pp.20-21.]

Collection consists of Julien Bryan's United States passport; scrapbook of newspaper clippings; and announcements and reviews of Julien Bryan's "Nazi Germany" traveling lecture; an envelope of duplicate newspaper clippings on "Siege" (of Warsaw); and a scrapbook of articles written on Julien Bryan's "Siege of Warsaw" film and book.

Learn about over 1,000 camps and ghettos in Volume I and II of this encyclopedia, which are available as a free PDF download. This reference provides text, photographs, charts, maps, and extensive indexes.